Washington, D.C.—President Bush is set to announce today that he is lifting the executive moratorium on new offshore drilling off our coasts. This will have no impact on the Congressional moratorium, which is renewed annually through the appropriations process, and still remains in place.

"This is the most cynical of political ploys. Even the Bush administration admits that offshore drilling will do absolutely nothing to lower gas prices, today, tomorrow, or even a decade from now. This is nothing more than an attempt to exploit the suffering of hardworking Americans in order to pad Big Oil’s bottom line.

"John McCain, George Bush, and Big Oil are working in lockstep to push for the ‘exploitation’ of our coasts, as McCain himself called it. It is the failed policies of the Bush administration that have crippled our economy and caused energy prices to skyrocket—and John McCain is just calling for more of the same. In fact, he also wants a Texas-sized tax cut for Big Oil--$1.2 billion for ExxonMobil alone. America simply cannot afford another president from the Grand Oil Party.

"Barack Obama knows that simply seeking a bigger fix is not the way to end our addiction to oil and won’t do anything to ease our pain at the pump. He has a plan that will make the oil companies pay their fair share on their record profits in order to giving hardworking Americans a $1,000 tax cut to get us through today’s crisis. In addition to real relief at the pump now, Obama’s plan will put us on the true path to energy independence and break Big Oil’s chokehold on our economy once and for all."

----The Department of Energy: The DOE’s Energy Information Administration says offshore or Arctic Refuge oil won’t flow for ten years and prices won’t be affected until at least 2027. The impact on price? "Insignificant."

The Department of the Interior: The number of drilling permits on federal lands doubled in the last five years while the price of gas almost tripled. More drilling does not lower prices.

House Natural Resources Committee: Oil and gas companies hold leases to 68 million acres of federal land and waters — an area the size of Nevada — that are producing nothing. Oil production on these lands could cut U.S. oil imports by more than one-third.

John McCain On the effect of more U.S. oil drilling on the price of gas: "I don’t see an immediate relief.... Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial." Fresno, June 23, 2008

T. Boone Pickens: "I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of." June 8, 2008

The U.S. holds 2% of global oil reserves but consumes 24% of the world’s oil. We can’t drill our way to energy independence. Conservation, alternative energy sources and technological advances are the cheaper, faster, cleaner, surer way to meet America’s energy needs while reducing the threat of global warming.

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Paid for by the Sierra Club Political Committee, http://www.sierraclub.org/, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.